Year 1 Blog

Welcome to the blog for our Year 1 classes. The year group blogs are a great communication tool. Teachers will be posting news, photographs, details of homework, examples of work, and anything they wish to share with their pupils and parents. Please speak to your class teacher if you have any question, feedback or concerns.

Mrs Foulds

Green Class Teacher

Mrs De Vynck

Purple Class Teacher

We have two year 1 classes. Children in these classes are developing their skills and building on the learning from Foundation Stage. When the children are ready, usually by October half term, the learning becomes based on the Key Stage One National Curriculum Programmes of Study. We still believe that children learn best when the ‘subjects’ are linked in a meaningful way and then basic skills are taught for a real purpose. We encourage the children to take ownership of their learning, ask questions and have a say in the planning process. We hope to motivate all children by taking account of their needs, strengths and interests and provide rich experiences and learning opportunities which will continue to excite them.

It was really nice to see everyone happy to come back to school after the half-term. The signs of Autumn are getting more evident now and our weather chart, once populated with sunny days, has been getting more cloudy and rainny entries and we even started recording foggy days as a tally.

This week we have been re-telling the Gunpowder Plot and below you can see some children enacting Guy Fawkes and his friends talking about their “nasty plan” to blow the Houses of Parliament up. Today they showed what they have learned by describing some of the artefacts related to the topic.

We have had plenty of opportunities to talk about Bonfire Night: in Music the children played “It’s Bonfire Night” using instruments to play the different fireworks: rockets, catherine wheel. They are also learning a new song about trains, in line with our “All Change” theme for this term. In Art lessons they used lines and mixing colours to create fireworks designs. Some of these can be seen in a display in Purple Class.

In Maths the children have practised adding and subtracting by counting on and counting back and they are getting very confident in trying different strategies to solve missing number problems.

The school value for this half-term is courage and some children have already shown they are able to overcome their fears when they stood in front of their peers and told the class why they should be voted to represent their class as School Councillors. Congratulations to our newly elected councellors in Year 1: Lucca and Eva (Purple Class); Tim and Neha (Green Class).

The home-learning books have been sent back today, together with this half-term overview.

This week year 1 has been learning about Guy Fawkes. Can your child remember the “Remember remember” rhyme? We acted the story out and the teachers retold the story of Guy Fawkes’ life, from his time in Spain to the night of 5th November 1605 under the Houses of Parliament. In a second session, the children were good historians by tracking down evidence. The children had 5 statements about the story of Guy Fawkes – for example, ” He wore a big hat.” or ” Guy Fawkes was arrested” – and they had to pick the pictures which formed the best pieces of evidence for that statement. Shakers were the Catherine wheels, bangers were expertly portrayed by children randomly banging drums and the rockets were made from a sequence of glockenspiels, tambourines and then rainmakers. The children really enjoyed it and worked together very well indeed.

Home learning books will be home tomorrow, with new suggestions for home learning activities and this half-term’s overview.

It’s been a fresh start to the new half-term. The children in green class have been excited to be able to use the “foggy” and “frosty” weather symbols for the first time. With the longer nights, it would be useful to talk about this seasonal change with your children, and discuss why there is this change in daylight.

The children have been thinking about Harvesting this week, Anna’s Grandma brought in a pumpkin, which the children observed, cut and investigated with tweezers and magnifying glasses. Then they went on a vegetable hunt around the school, to see what other vegetables could be harvested.

Following the windy weather, we went outside and made a leaf maze, which required teamwork, cooperation and hunting skills. We were thrilled with the outcome.

Some children in Green Class had a lovely time tidying up our garden this morning. They were fascinated by the worms they found in the soil. The pulled up the remaining two pumpkins. We have left the sweetcorn for now; and the cosmos is still providing some nice colour. Thank you to the parent, Miss Mackay, who came and helped this morning. We are always grateful to adults who are able to come and support in this way.

Autumn is definitely settling in and the children had more opportunities this week to observe its signs and collected leaves, twigs and seeds which they sorted in different ways during some lovely outdoor science sessions.

In both classes the children have used clay to make leaves using the ones they collected in Highfield Park on Monday as models. They really enjoyed rolling and cutting the clay and drawing all the details on. Next week we will be painting these using the colour mixing skills they have been practising this half-term.

Following up our RE theme of looking into the wonders of the world, the children have listened to and discussed the story of Creation according to some religious faiths and recreated it in groups, with Mrs Lyal, using play doh.

In Maths we have started on Addition and Subtraction within 10 so that the children can secure their understanding of how they can combine two sets of objects to find out how many there are altogether. We then represented the addition in the abstract form and explored the commutative law of addition, showing that there are different ways to represent the same addition sum.

We have been talking about our walk to Highfield Park in several occasions this week and today the children wrote recounts of the day. The children rose to the challenge of this writing style and remembered the day in detail. We were very impressed how they used the time connectives to start their sentences: first, next, then, finally…

The children continued to practise for the Harvester Concert and we are all looking forward to listening to them in both sessions next Wednesday. They are giving their very best to their songs and you are in for a treat if you have reserved your seats already. If you haven’t yet, please remember to send in the slips.

Thank you to the parents who have already signed in and booked slots for the Parent Consultation evenings next week. We look forward to seeing you.

Have you all a lovely weekend and see you on Monday for our last week before the half-term break.